It's disheartening enough to see children pull stuff like this, especially in the predominantly caucasian communities where I grew up. But to see grown, relatively young and presumably cosmopolitan adults doing it, and a newspaper publishing it so matter-of-factly, is a sad reminder that this behaviour never goes out of style.

In all my years of passive Olympic watching, including the two held in Canada in my lifetime and probably the next one here in 2010, I've rarely if ever seen a packed house at any of the competitions shown on TV. The cameras always pick up huge blocks of unsold seats, and most host countries are left with white elephants for many years afterwards (our own Montreal was saddled with astronomical debts for 30 years after staging the event in 1976). Don't know why this is such news, other than the fact that it once again caught senior officials stretching the truth. They can blame the weather all they want, but this is the true face of the Olympics, and I wouldn't be surprised if China tears down many of the venues in the near future, just to lessen the chance of being stuck with derelict buildings they'll never be able to fill.

In all my years of passive Olympic watching, including the two held in Canada in my lifetime and probably the next one here in 2010, I've rarely if ever seen a packed house at any of the competitions shown on TV. The cameras always pick up huge blocks of unsold seats, and most host countries are left with white elephants for many years afterwards (our own Montreal was saddled with astronomical debts for 30 years after staging the event in 1976). Don't know why this is such news, other than the fact that it once again caught senior officials stretching the truth. They can blame the weather all they want, but this is the true face of the Olympics, and I wouldn't be surprised if China tears down many of the venues in the near future, just to lessen the chance of being stuck with derelict buildings they'll never be able to fill.

It's news because no one is making any money, especially the corporate sponsors!

Most of the ancillary buildings will probably not remain. That's pretty typical everywhere, just like World's Fairs. Who really needs a velodrome? The dormitories are already presold as condos, etc

They probably could keep the buildings for future events . .. if they'd only built them with certain predictable realities (i.e. attendance) in mind. But then again, it probably is better to tear 'em down and use the property for other projects in the future.

It just seems like each new host country learns little from the previous ones who blew their wads, and the bigger the host country, such as this year's, the bigger the waste. Wasted space, wasted construction costs, wasted manpower, wasted ancilliary markets and opportunities (thus the unhappy sponsors, I guess). The strange policies surrounding this year's venues definitely don't help.

Obviously, it's mostly about the glory anyways, but you'd think after several decades of one country/city after another losing money on the Olympics, they'd see fit to reign in the overall size of . . . well, everything. Tighten the whole damned thing down to reflect actual attendance figures, which by now can probably be safely estimated by just about any country where the leaders aren't prone to boastful-but-transparent-in-this-day-and-age inflation of numbers to impress. I'm sure the Olympics are a money-losing prospect for a lot of people involved, but the publicity is gold. Again, it's the glory that matters. But I dare say sponsors have come away much more satisifed at their investments in previous, comparitively smaller Olympics, even as the host cities incurred ridiculous debts on the back end.

That interesting Post piece nails it in the first paragraph:

This central heart of the Games, including the Bird's Nest, Water Cube, National Indoor Stadium, Fencing Hall and a central plaza as big as the National Mall, is so vast that it's at least five times bigger than necessary to hold the number of people who usually use it.

Build something far too big, deny the citizenry access to it, even when it's only mostly- or partly-filled for major competitions. In other countries, you could at least get close to the buildings--and all the ancilliary displays they offer--even if you didn't give a rat's ass about what was going on inside them.

The Washington Post wrote:And the Green's sole purpose is to impress you.

Trailer for BABYLON AD, with Michelle Yeoh and . . . Vin Diesel
I'll give her credit, she certainly gets into higher profile western movies than most Asian actresses, but whether they're worthy of her talents is another story. Certainly a lot of visual pizzazz in this one:
http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/babylonad/

What's the difference between a world record and an olympic record? I've been watching the Olympics and some teams win the title of world record (WR) or Olympic record OR).... what's the difference? Thanks Fifteen.... so that means that an athlete at the Olympics would rather strive for a world record than the Olympic record, I'm assuming.______________________url=http://www.keywordspy.com]keyword research[/url ~ url=http://www.keywordspy.com]keyword tool[/url ~ url=http://www.keywordspy.comkeyword tracking[/url~ url=http://www.keywordspy.com/overview/keyword.aspx?q=affiliate%20elite]affiliate elite[/url

Last edited by marrieX on Fri Apr 24, 2009 7:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

The way I understand it, an Olympic record is the best performance in the whole of Olympic competition, whereas a World record is the best performance ever, whether in the Olympics or not. So it's possible to get a World record in an event held somewhere else, but if it's done during the Olympics it's still a World record because no one anywhere has bettered it. If someone performs better at an event than has ever been acheived in the Olympics, but it is not better than has been acheived somewhere else, it is an Olympic record.

cal42 wrote:The way I understand it, an Olympic record is the best performance in the whole of Olympic competition, whereas a World record is the best performance ever, whether in the Olympics or not. So it's possible to get a World record in an event held somewhere else, but if it's done during the Olympics it's still a World record because no one anywhere has bettered it. If someone performs better at an event than has ever been acheived in the Olympics, but it is not better than has been acheived somewhere else, it is an Olympic record.

Basically, a World record trumps an Olympic record.

Man, that seemed so much clearer when I was just saying it in my head

Hee hee, Cal is correct, though of course the events have to be sanctioned and other events have certain criteria that cannot be passed like a tail wind of more than 2.0 m/s for the 100 meter dash would nullify any world/olympic record time. I will not add any "drug" talk .